Currently, a teleconference call can be recorded and then played back. Typically, the mixed stream of the teleconference (mixed stream of all callers on the teleconference) is recorded. The recorded mixed stream of the teleconference can then be played back. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2007/0263603 describes a system that allows a participant to pause the teleconference and thereafter play back the teleconference at a controllable speed and rejoin the live teleconference. Moreover, systems such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,085,558 allows a participant who was dropped from a teleconference to join the teleconference at the point the participant was dropped and play back the missed portion of the teleconference stream. The participant can then fast forward through the missed portion and then rejoin the teleconference.
The problem with existing systems is that during a live conference, the mixed audio and/or video stream of all of the conference participants is the only available stream that can be played back during the conference. In a typical conference, two or more participants will at some point speak at the same time. This speaker overlap can cause the participants of the conference to not understand what is being said. In addition, if a caller speaks softly, their voice may be difficult to hear based on noise by other speakers or background noise from other sources than the speaker's audio stream. Simply playing-back the mixed conference stream will not allow someone listening to understand what has been said. This is because the participant will hear/see the same message. Because of these problems, the other participants may have to speak up and tell the other people in the conference to repeat what was said.
This problem is exacerbated in situations where some users may be able to speak/listen and other may only be able to listen because they are receiving the teleconference in broadcast mode. In this case, those who are in broadcast-only mode cannot tell the speaker(s) to repeat what was said.
In addition, a participant may not see what someone said/did in a video conference because the system may not be displaying the particular participant at the time. The video system may only be focused on the main person who is speaking and not another participant. By playing back the previously displayed video, the attendee may not to be able to see what another person was doing during the video conference.